


Runaways

by ashesinyourhair



Series: SPN AU Fragments [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Dark Angel AU, Gen, fragment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 14:05:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesinyourhair/pseuds/ashesinyourhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dark Angel AU fragment: Castiel, Anna, and over a dozen of their "siblings" escape the clandestine military facility/lab where they grew up. Basically the prologue of Dark Angel; will probably eventually become a larger work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runaways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HappyFunBallXD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyFunBallXD/gifts).



_I didn’t set out to rebel. I was just following_ her _, like I’d always done._

He darts behind a tree and slams himself flush against the trunk, and a second later a swarm of snowmobiles whoosh by at his back. As soon as they’re past, he’s moving again. His grey sweats offer some camouflage against the dirty snow, but hiding isn’t an option with the entire security force combing the woods for them. His best bet is to keep enough distance and move fast enough that he’ll be hard to hit in the dark.

Castiel _is_ fast, and not just for his age. Faster than them. He can do this.

There’s a stream up ahead at the bottom of a steep bank. He knows this from countless exercises. Then, if he bears west, he should hit the perimeter fence in five and a half minutes. Any guard he meets between here and there will have orders to take him alive. Once he makes it over the fence, those become kill orders.

He _will_ make it over the fence. He doesn’t think any further than that now.

The alarms fade away behind him as he moves toward the outer regions of the compound. Much nearer is the frantic barking of search dogs (two teams a half a mile to the southeast and splitting off east and southwest; one a third of a mile to the south and gaining), and gunshots that he can only hope are missing their targets.

_Twenty of us left our cells that night. Nineteen made it out of the barracks. We split up immediately. We knew it was probably the last time we’d see each other, no matter what happened after that. Anna said it was the only way._

_I was eleven years old._

He pushes through shoulder-high brush and sees where the ground drops off towards the stream. He takes two strides toward it before something hits him sharp between the shoulder blades, punching the breath out of him and knocking him off his feet, into the hard, rocky soil under the grey slush.

Footsteps thunder towards him, and a voice says, “subject engaged at 23-11, subject has been hit—” just as Castiel’s boot connects with a knee with a sickening crunch. He pulls the guard to the ground by his rifle, which Castiel tugs from his grasp and slams into the face of the second guard. A kick to the sternum sends the man sprawling. The first guard pulls Castiel’s leg out from under him, and he goes down hard. He kicks back with his free leg but misses the man’s face, his helmet absorbing the impact. Castiel wrenches around, twists, points the gun right between the man’s eyes.

And hesitates.

The guard reaches for his sidearm.

A shot cracks right behind Castiel’s ear, and the guard slumps. Castiel looks up into a pale face amid a tangle of red hair.

“Move, soldier!” Anna says, and Castiel scrambles to his feet. The second guard is sprawled out and bleeding from the head; Anna stares down the sights of his gun at the other. She lowers it and whips her head towards Castiel. “ _Move!_ ” she shouts, grabs his arm and pulls him toward the stream.

They scramble down the bank, cross the frigid water, and turn west, Anna taking point. The sounds of the hunt are converging on them, the closest of their pursuers just a quarter mile back. Others are moving in ahead, attempting to intercept them before they reach the fence. It’s too close to tell whether they’ll succeed.

Half a mile from the fence, Anna stops, and Castiel almost crashes into her. She turns, stares into the woods. Listens.

Castiel does too, and what he hears—humming low under all the other sounds, maybe mistakeable for the electric fence if you didn’t know better—makes his heart jackknife. “Anna…”

“They’re waiting.” She swallows, eyes wide and darting all around. “This way,” she says, and pushes back past him to the right, headed north-northeast.

“The fence,” Castiel says as they break into a sprint again. Anna doesn’t respond. He follows anyway. Of course he does.

It takes them four more minutes to reach the fence—the four longest minutes Castiel has ever experienced. As soon as they glimpse it through the trees, Anna stops again, and they listen. Then she nods, and turns to Castiel.

“We’re a mile from the road,” she says. “Cross it and keep going. You should make the border by sunrise. You injured? You were hit.”

“Non-lethal round,” Castiel says. “I’m fine. We should go.”

But Anna shakes her head. “I’m not going over right here. Two’s too many. Check your weapon and go, there’ll be others on the outside.”

“But—”

“ _Castiel._ That is an _order_.”

He shuts his mouth. That voice doesn’t belong to his sister, not to Anna who told him stories after lights-out and snuck him extra food and kept his secrets. It belongs to his commander, and it’s a voice to be obeyed.

Cas checks the gun he took from the guard. He can hear the sounds of pursuit turning towards them again, but Anna is unmoved, composed. A leader.

He looks up into her eyes for the last time.

“Move out,” she says, quietly.

The _yes, ma’am_ is on his lips automatically before he stops, reconsiders. “ _À bientôt,_ ” he says instead.

Anna cracks half a smile at that. His pronunciation never did earn her approval.

“ _Adieu,_ ” she replies, and Castiel’s heart sinks. Before he can manage to say _wait_ , she turns and dashes back into the woods, towards the shouting and gunfire.

_Up until that moment, I hadn’t let myself believe that I’d never see her again._

Suddenly he feels very alone.

He runs for the fence, expecting to be shot down any moment. The shots don’t come. Nothing comes.

He slings the gun over his back and looks up at the fence. It hums, lower-pitched than the sound they heard toward the west, and a sign overhead warns of high voltage. His pulse pounds, even though he knows this should pose no problem. This fence wasn’t designed to keep him in. He was never supposed to get this far.

Castiel pauses one more moment and looks back toward the alarms even he can barely hear now, through the woods that Anna vanished into. He wonders who else is still in those woods. Who else made it out.

He looks back through the fence, into the dark, and wonders what’s on the other side.

He takes a breath, and leaps.

**Author's Note:**

> [Cross-posted to tumblr.](http://asheswrites.tumblr.com/post/54196100475/runaways)


End file.
